


Victory

by Marquise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Birth, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marquise/pseuds/Marquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lysa finds happiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ GoT Exchange.

She had lost track of the time, truth be told. 

She no longer remembered when the labor started, though it had gripped her with unbelievable fear at the time—a tightening of the stomach that had made her cry out more in horror than pain. When it became clear that no, this was what was supposed to happen, that her womb was not expelling the child like a sickness, she had fallen into a dazed state. Everything seemed to happen to her without her being involved. Her mind was clouded, the fear overtaken with something strange and new, a hopeful anticipation. _This may be right, this may be right._

She had been taken to bed before only to give birth to dead or dying babes, but something in the tremors that raked her body gave her a thread of hope. There was something new there, something she had never felt before in all those failed attempts. When she closed her eyes it was almost as if she could touch the small life inside her, communicate with it. _It’s okay. It’s all okay._

Had it been days ago, the first time she felt that connection? Lysa couldn’t say. She just knew that she had to hold on to it, grip it as though her life depended on it. It was the only thing that mattered, an enormous weight for such a small being to bear, but she had faith.

If this failed she might as well never emerge from this room.

A nursemaid gripped her hand, though the other woman seems thousands of miles away. Her skin is soft, smooth, and her words washed over Lysa like a warm wave. An intended wave of comfort, though Lysa couldn’t make out what exactly she is saying. It doesn’t seem to matter; her eyes were kind and before she knew it she was crying out of something other than pain or fear. 

\----

The rest of it passed in a dream, less real to her than she thought possible. Perhaps it’s that it all went so well—that the nurses, nervous and fretting, did not seem sullen, that her body hurt in a way that was markedly different than all the times before—perhaps that’s why her mind refuses to accept that maybe, maybe things will be alright.

When she heard the child cry—frail and faint, but there, clear as day—she almost thought that if were she to die then and there, she would be happy.

But when they put the babe in her arms, frail and squirming, all thoughts of death left her mind.

“You made it,” someone told her. Lysa couldn’t look, couldn’t look at anything other than the small, hard-fought bundle in her arms. So weak and yet not, because he’s here, with her, and she made it, he made it.  
The tears ran hot on her face, though the pain is long since gone.

\---

They left her some hours later. 

The sun had risen hours ago, but the curtains had been drawn—for what reason, Lysa couldn’t say—but when the nursemaids left, when Jon had paid his respects and given her his kind words and left, they had been thrown open to allow her to catch some glimpse of the sun.

She had caught more than that. The light filled the room, making everything seem alive and new. She watched flecks of dust dance in the beams with a wonder she hadn’t felt since childhood, brought on by the fact that she has sharing this all, new, with her son. Her beautiful, alive, son, her reward for everything she had suffered and endured. 

She had stopped crying by this point, but her face was still flushed and tight thanks to her smile. It felt sadly strange to smile, and truth be told she hadn’t realized that it had become so infrequent for her until this day. She had settled into a morose routine without every knowing it, had fallen into patterns that she hoped had now been completely broken. 

Her son stirred in her arms, nuzzling against her, and it’s all she could do not to break down in sobs. He moves, he breathes, he lives.

She watched him, mapped out every perfect line of him, the look and feel of his soft hair. _Memorizing,_ she thought briefly, _for when this all falls apart_. But no, she mustn’t think that, that thought makes no sense. Not when he is here now, safe in her arms, not when she’s won. She has her victory and it tastes sweeter than she could have ever imagined. 

And it’s not even the victory, the sense that had had done something that she had strived so long for, that everyone thought was hopeless. It was not that she had proved them all wrong, that she had birthed a child—a son—who had lived, that she had finally proven her worth in their eyes. Lysa watches her son sleep and knows that the elation she feels, the warmth and sense of hope, comes from the fact that she now has a child and as long as she has a child she is not alone.

She’d been alone for far, far too long, despite the throngs of people that shadowed her at court, making her feel self-conscious and nervous at all times. She had been alone since Petyr had been sent away, but especially since Cat had left. She had hated her sister in those last few years at Riverrun, she had wished her away with every fiber of her being, yet after the wedding when Cat took off to the North it had felt like a part of her had been severed. She had desired nothing more than to be out of her sister’s shadow, but in the absence she missed the warmth. After her first child had been taken from her (a memory that had hung over every birthing bed since, a memory she had tried to claw from her mind) Cat had been confused at her numbness, but when Lysa had crouched beside her and laid her head in Cat’s lap—a habit from girlhood—she had stroked her sister’s hair and soothed her in an instinctive, unquestioning way. So yes, Cat was hated and wished away, but Lysa’s life was empty and her mind lost in her absence. 

But now? 

She looked down at the bundle in her arms and takes a deep breath; it sounded impossibly loud in the silence of the room. “You’re here,” she whispered, not wanting to disturb this peace. “And together we will want for nothing.”

He son slept on. Droplets formed on the blanket and she realized she was crying again, the tears hot and joyful, the outward expression of a heart about to burst with need and happiness. She was worn and weary but more elated than she has been since her girlhood, since the time before it all came crashing down around her. The one thing she ever wanted is here in her arms, resting, the one thing she needed. Jon was pleased with an heir, and she knew that his bannermen have breathed a sigh a relief, but all of that is dwarfed by her own feelings. 

“Never alone.” She rested her fingers against his chest to feel his hard beat, repeated the words to herself with each quiet thump, her smile growing.


End file.
